Royai Prompts
by SunshineOwl
Summary: Royai prompts. Not in any specific order, nor necessarily interconnected. Will update when convenient. Still trying to think of a title other than "Royai prompts."
1. Evidence

With the military training she possessed, Riza was no stranger to a number of things. One of those things would be clearing one's presence from the battlefield. But, in this case, the battlefield was … Roy's apartment.

She moved with unnecessary precision, tiptoeing around to collect her belonging as not to wake the sleeping colonel. She stepped into her uniform soundlessly and fixed her hair with a brush she found on the bathroom counter. She was about to leave a note on his bedside table when his eyes eased open.

"Leaving so soon, Lieutenant?"

Riza jumped slightly as his words caught her offgaurd. "I have to go," she said smoothly after a split-second recovery. She smiled and gave him a small kiss.

"See you later?" he asked slyly.

Riza rose to her full height and said stiffly, "Work's on Monday." But as she left the room, Roy was sure he saw a slight smile on her lips.


	2. I'm Here

The hopeless days were the rainy ones. The sun could be high and bright, but his eyes were drenched and dark.

She would let him set at his desk in their home. She wouldn't disturb him. It was business, afterall. Or so he said.

So the blinds were closed and the door was locked and it rained over his paperwork and no matter how long she lingered by the doorway, the office was overcast.


	3. Funeral

The little girl's sniffles and choked sobs broke his heart as he set the cardboard box into the soil. He couldn't help but be reminded of the countless lived that ended up like this, or worse, during the war.

"Daddy ... Daddy..." she cried. He patted the earth firmly around the box and reached for her to come to him. She nodded, little whimpers escaping her tiny rose lips. One arm around her, he nodded, and she placed a construction paper card over the upturned mound. In marker were drawings of butterflies, grass, and a blob of a girl standing next to a blob of a dog.

He allowed her a few more sobs before smoothing a thumb over her cheek. "Okay, that's enough. No more crying, okay?"

She nodded her little head up at him, snot pooling under her nose. "Soldiers don't cry."

And then he had to remind himself: _No more crying, okay?_ "That's right."


	4. Magic

It was not often the Colonel was on the other end of Riza's phone. When he called, it was usually to remind her of work or a change of plans or something important or work-related. Of course it was. He was her colonel and she was his lieutenant.

But that one night – she didn't know how he knew, or if he knew at all. She'd woken in a sweat, eyes wide with terror and death. She was shaken and upset. And so she left the bed and went to the cupboard to make some tea when it rang. It sent violent shivers through her as the sudden sound reminded her of rounds of gun shots.

But no, it was only the phone.

"Hello?"

"Lieutenant?"

"Colonel? Why are you calling at this hour? Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Are – are you alright?"

She took a long, and, though she tried to hide it, shuddering breath. It was the colonel. It was her colonel. It was his voice. "Yes, sir. I'm fine."

"You're sure? There's no need to call me sir. I'm on a private line."

"Really, I'm alright. Thank you for calling. Good night."

Setting the receiver down, she wondered how he knew. Of course, he didn't. That would be impossible. It was like – it was like magic.


	5. Orchids

She was never very fond of flowers. Though, it became sort of a joke for them, didn't it?

It was their anniversary. He'd bought her a vase of pale purple orchids and set it on the counter.

"Flowers?" she asked when the petals caught her eye.

He swore amusement was laced in her voice. "You don't like them?"

She turned to him with a slight smirk. "They're just very unoriginal, don't you think, flowers?"

Roy smiled. "Well, that's me: Roy the Unoriginal Fuhrer."

The gag picked up, and Roy bought her flowers every chance he had. He'd have them delivered to the house, hidden in places she's stumble upon, like under plates in the cupboard or between book pages. He'd put them in her hair and make her go out in public, laughing at her practiced tolerance at his shenanigans. Any passerby would've thought the Fuhrer's wife adored flowers, but in reality, she quite grew to hate them. Still, it was their joke, so she played along.

Was it that same sick joke that carried him to her grave with a bundle of orchids three years later? Was it that same sick joke that left a twisted smile on his face as it rained? Was he being terrible, bringing flowers to her lonely tombstone? He did not know, he did not have her their to bring him to his senses.

There was a crowd now, clouds of people scattered around. "That's the Fuhrer," whispered the wind. "Fuhrer Mustang vising his late wife's grave." "The poor thing. His bones are too young for this." "Look, he's brought her flowers." "Yes, I remember, she did love flowers."

He was truly hopeless. The man who had everything within reach. He had the country. He had, finally, the woman he was meant to spend his life with. Now, all that he had was a bundle of orchids, damp from the rain.


	6. Puppy Love

"Roy, you're being ridiculous. She's _seven_. It's just kids."

Roy's eyes shot through the window like a thousand blood-thirsty daggers at the sight of his daughter playing in the yard with the neighbor's son.

"We were just kids," he grumbled through gritted teeth.

Riza stifled a small laugh. "Roy, you're reminding me of Maes."

His expression changed from that of the devil to unreadable. He turned to her. "Riza..."

"Sorry. Never mind." A pause. "Still, you're overreacting."

She did not care to mention that she was cleaning her gun under the table.


	7. Clean

She didn't really care much for cardboard boxes. Their texture, their presence. They were blocky and cluttered corners and hid away in backs of attics. But, she didn't have much of a choice. She wasn't very well going to leave his gloves in the closet, his books on the shelf, his coat by the door. She did not want, in these few hours, to be reminded.

When people die, their things need to be cleaned up. Who will pick through her belongings tonight?


	8. Secrets

"You love Edward, don't you?"

Winry smiled down at her tea. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do love that gear head." Slight silence, then the girl looked up. "What about the colonel? Don't you love him?"

Riza's eyes relaxed and a small smile appeared on her lips, almost so slight it was unnoticeable. "He is someone that I have to protect. I will follow him at all costs."

"But, that's not what I asked you," she protested. "Protecting and loving aren't the same thing."

The woman smirked, ever so faintly, and met eyes with the girl. "Aren't they?"


	9. Killer's Fingertips

He hated her almost as much as he hated himself.

He hated that he'd dragged her into this. He should have stayed far away from her. He should have let her have her own life, not roped her into his mission that surely lead to death. But then, it was also her fault too, wasn't it? She didn't have to be so small and headstrong, so lonely yet so easy to talk to.

The sand filled his boots and weighed down his heart (or, what was left of it). He knew he wasn't being fair, not at all, but things stopped being fair when he tugged on gloves that only resulted in murder. And now...

Goddammit, he thought, and now she's shown up here, in the middle of a battlefield. Like she thought to herself, "Let's join the academy," and grabbed the next train to hell. She had no business here, with that white coat and the gun over her shoulder, and those eyes ... a person like her had no business looking through eyes like that.

He hated hearing her voice, because it made him swell inside. He hated everything about her – her lips, her feet, her fragile fingers. He hated the bags under her weary eyelids and the smirk she saved for him on rare occasions. He hated her hair, which grew longer in tendrils of memories and death, and surely there was a new strand of hair for every person she killed. Surely, he had his own strand of hair, slowly turning gray on her head. He hated the way her fingers seemed to have been made for the trigger, sitting on its gateway like a bird on its perch.

He was certain she hated him too, but nobody could possibly hate Roy Mustang as much as he hated himself. No one simply hated Riza Hawkeye, though, and so maybe that's why they were able to sit in silence on sooty crates, maybe that's why she let him clean her gun, and maybe that's why she could touch his killer's fingertips and only tremble slightly, because their lives were in each other's hands, as much as they hated themselves for it.

Maybe what he hated the most was that his heart, chipped and scuffed and surely melting to dust, had chosen her, of all people. No one simply hated Riza Hawkeye, and Roy could say safely that he really did hate her, because you can't hate someone so much without loving them first.


	10. Dragon's Feet

The whole situation was wrong. Terribly wrong. Had any other woman shed her top in front of him, it would have been different. Had any other woman left her back exposed, it would have been different. Had any other woman muttered guilty nothings about a tattoo, it would have been different. But this ... Whatever it was, it was a sick, twisted joke. It had to be a joke. If it weren't a joke, why was he here, here, with her before him, marred back. Cursed back. Damned back. It was not right, it was not right.

This was not what he wanted. This is not how he imagined it. Boyhood dreams of the pretty girl with the yellow hair and brown eyes had been morphed into a nightmare, scarred and red. Surely he couldn't ... Surely ... It was not right, it was not right.

He had her permission, even. As his fingertips grazed her back, drinking in her secrets, he felt his fingers monsters, dragons, that left clawed prints in its path. Then, later, after his monster's feet trod the same path for several sunsets, they breathed fire on the symbols that marked the pathway. It was not right, it was not right.

He thought, years later, under different circumstances, it would have been better. Maybe that would have fallen into love. But now, after dragon's burned forests, all they had fallen into was a mess. And, he decided after a heartbeat, they had not even fallen at all. They'd shuffled, then strolled, then stumbled, and then were plunged. It was not right, it was not right.


	11. She Drinks to Drown

It was not strange for the soldiers to find their fellows gathered behind the tents, pressing dirty bottles to their lips. Some of the men cheered, having a good old time at war with their comrades, but it was more common to hear muffled calls for help or God or mercy, masked only by the lip of a yellowing mug. This was the only place no one bothered or minded if you cried, because it was easy to say the alcohol got to you. Nobody asked if it really did or not.

They were not supposed to have the alcohol, of course. But if the officers displayed any form of pity, allowing the smuggling of liquid pain relievers was it. They were able to turn a blind eye to the operation.

So when Roy Mustang's boots shuffled through the sand and kicked aside empty bottles, he was looking for something to wash away his sins. He knew he'd never find it. Even if he scrubbed himself raw, what he'd done would never leave him. But, for now, at least, he could fool himself to think that this was what he needed. He wanted to sit in the sand, drink to his wounds, and go back to his tent. He did not want to find a girl with short hair crouched into the corner of a crumbling wall, clutching a glass to large for her tiny hands.

"I didn't know you drank."

The sound of his boots next to hers made her flinch, a little of the amber liquid sloshing off the lip of her cup. "I don't."

He kneeled to her level, her terrified eyes in his. He studied her face for a long time. The underpart of her eyes drooped, her lips quivering, her eyebrows screwed up in fright.

"Then why do you have that?" He nodded down to her hands. "Why don't you give it to me, someone who needs it?" He didn't think now was a good time to mention she was too pretty to be holding something so terrible.

"_No!_" she almost shouted as he leaned forward slightly. She hugged the glass to her chest, staring down to it as if it was all she had to hold on to. _You have me_, he wanted to say. "I ... I need this." She brought the glass to her mouth and downed three gulps.

"You're not doing it right," he said when she was done. "You're supposed to drink it slowly so you swim in your pain."

"I don't want to swim," she said, voice shivering. "I want to drown."

She nearly inhaled five more mouthfuls, shaking as she swallowed.

"Hey, stop that," he said gently, putting a hand over hers. "You're going to hurt yourself. That's stuff's supposed to be taken lightly. You'll have one hell of a hangover in the morning." He wanted to find the bastard who'd given a tall glass of liquor to this girl and beat the living hell out of him.

She brought her eyes to his slowly. He couldn't tell if hers were glassy from the alcohol or from tears (_Ah, isn't that point?_ he reminded himself). "Why are we here?" she whispered. "Why are we doing this? I told you I was going to follow you. _Why did you lead me here?_" Leaving no room for doubts, the glass crashed against her mouth and she downed more than half of her remaining drink, letting the liquor line her lips and collect on her chin.

Roy was breaking, watching her do this. Riza Hawkeye was not a drunk. He'd sooner kill himself than let her drown.

"Stop it," he said harshly, grabbing the glass before she could react. He knocked it over, allowing the contents to sink into the sand.

"_Hey!_ Give that back you bastard!" The alcohol was making its way to her speech, and her words were lopsided. Roy looked at her, really, really, looked at her. She looked back, dumbly at first, and then with rage, and then everything overcame her and she closed her eyes before tears spilled and she lurched forward and clutched the front of Roy's shirt and hung on for dear life. She screamed into him, and it was all he could do not to scream back. He put his arms, were they shaking?, around her and held on, pulling her out. He would not let her down.

Among drunken yells and the clinging of bottles and faint sobs, Roy Mustang held on to the blonde girl who screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed until her voice was hoarse and then she just lay there on top of him, soaking his shirtfront with tears and hiccups. His grip only tightened, because she had drowned and because he was pulling her up, and now Riza Hawkeye had washed up on shore, coughing and crying because he would not let her drown.


	12. Lament of the Shooter

_Let's play house_

_You'll be king,_

_I'll be queen._

_Maybe we'll be happy._

_Maybe you'll be handsome_

_In gloves stained red,_

_I'll wear a hat of birds' hands_

_And a metal trigger ring._

_Leave a seal of devils_

_On scars I never made_

_And hold my hand_

_And run through hell_

_And maybe we'll be happy._


End file.
